because a fool and his money are soon parted...

... I just became an iPod owner. Well, not quite "just." I ordered a refurbished 60GB black iPod from the Apple store this afternoon. I should have it next week. But I feel dirty. I'll try to justify this purchase, for my benefit and for my friends, who have heard me say in the past "I don't want an iPod. I'm happy with my iRiver MP3 player [a Korean iPod knockoff with more features]."

The iRiver player is two years old, and for the past year the headphone jack has been funky. I have to wiggle and pull on it to get my music to sound right. Otherwise it "crackles" and sounds muffled. I've done some Googling and it's possible to open the player and re-solder the headphone jack. But I'm not an electronics expert and I don't own a soldering iron. I don't even own the proper tool to open the case. There's no guarantee this surgical procedure would work or that I'd be able to get the player back together again. And I'd have to do this at work, because my cats get all excited anytime I do any work on my desk at home and get in my way. So the iRiver player is probably going to end up on eBay, where I hope some music lover with expertise in repairs will pick it up.

Another reason I decided to get the iPod is that it's got 60 GB of space, instead of my current 40 GB. I'm actually running out of room on my player, and rather than delete something, I thought I'd just get a larger player. And I can hack the iPod firmware to customize it the same way I've hacked the iRiver, so I don't have to use iTunes. And I can finally be one of the "cool" kids with the iPod. Which means it'll probably get stolen on the subway in the first week. The tipping point for the iPod buy was yesterday, when Apple announced the new iPods. They slashed prices on the old 60 GB refurbs, so I can get one for 2/3 of what I paid for the iRiver when it was new. So if I turn the iPod into a paperweight in the first ten minutes with a hack, at least I won't be out the full purchase price.

In other tech news, I finally got Dell to replace the bad hard drive in my home PC. However, instead of just shipping me the replacement drive, apparently they're going to send someone to my house to install it. I wonder how long I'll have to wait for that service call?